


a crack in everything

by hiljainen



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Farm/Ranch, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Catholic Steve Rogers, Explicit Sexual Content, Irish Steve Rogers, Lesbian Rebecca Barnes, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Self-Harm, Slow Burn, War Veteran Bucky Barnes, War Veteran Steve Rogers, rating tags & number of chapters all subject to change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:27:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 17,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25240003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hiljainen/pseuds/hiljainen
Summary: WANTED: Single room available for manual labourer on small farmstead. Work will involve crops and livestock. Experience necessary. Board and lodging included. Sundays off.Steve Rogers, honourably discharged US Army veteran with no purpose left in life, answers an ad looking for help on a half-delapidated farmstead in the middle of nowhere. There he meets Rebecca Barnes and her brother Bucky, who is as beautiful as he is haunted.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 47
Kudos: 146





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

>   
> ring the bells that can still ring  
> forget your perfect offering  
> there is a crack, a crack in everything  
> that's how the light gets in  
> ____________________________________

The house was the only thing that seemed solid through the fog, its white-washed walls bright, windows glowing warm, so much like eyes Steve kept expecting them to blink. Around it the trees, at least they seemed to be trees, seemed to move, reach out and beckon with their long dark limbs, but he felt no wind. The air was still here. The house was tucked snug at the bottom of a valley, protected to the north and south by steeply sloping hills, the roads of which Steve’s geriatric car had groaned and rattled in protest at having to climb. It was near impossible to gauge the real scale of them though, from this and that alone, with the fog so thick that all his headlights seemed to do was bring it nearer. Fog, or was it mist? He couldn’t remember ever learning the difference. His grandmother had only, as far as he remembered, had one word for the thick low cloud that rolled in off the North Sea with the dawn.

Something moved across one of the windows, a shadow briefly blocking the light. Steve shook a shiver off his back. The fog, mist, _ceo,_ suddenly felt too heavy on his skin; he was seized by the want to be indoors, to be reminded how it felt to come in from the damp and be embraced by the warm crackle of a wood-stove. Its smoke was in the air here, though he couldn’t spot the chimney through the cloud.

Steve retrieved his duffle bag from the passenger seat — he hadn’t brought much since he didn’t own much to bring — and started down the dirt track, leaving the car where it was. No point risking trying to manoeuvre it closer, not now in the dark. The ground was soft and damp beneath his boots.

\--

The woman who answered the door looked exhausted, and relieved to see him. She was dark haired, dark eyed, dark circles beneath them. The face of someone who hadn’t slept well in a long time – Steve recognised it well from his own reflection.

“Steve Rogers?” she asked, before he could. “So glad you made it.” She moved back and held open the door for him, but kept hold of its edge, as if using it to keep herself upright. “You must be tired. Come in and sit down. Would you like some coffee?”

The hall was dim, lit only by the glow from another room, and smelt faintly damp.

“You must be Rebecca?” Steve found his voice came more reluctantly than he’d expected. It was overwhelming, suddenly, to be here. To be speaking to another human being.

“Yes, of course, yeah. Coffee?” Rebecca was leading him through into the kitchen. It was from here that the smoke-smell came, from a range stove against the far wall. She had a point. As far as Steve was aware there was no one else she could be; the reason help was needed in the first place was, after all, because the occupants of the farm had dwindled down to herself and — “Bucky, could you make some coffee?”

At the far end of the table was a man — at least the shape of one. The room seemed to be so dark, so thick with shadows, and the man hiding well among them. Steve could just about discern a pale cheek, the glint of an eye, and then Rebecca nudged past him and switched on the ceiling light. The sudden brightness made him wince. “So dark in here,” she was muttering, shaking her weary head. “Bucky, coffee? Please?”

The man stood abruptly enough that his chair scraped against the stone floor. He was tall standing, almost as tall as Steve, an inch or two shy. Broad across the chest and shoulders, though how much of his bulk was from the several layers of shirt, jumper, jacket he wore it was hard to be sure. He seemed off-balance, somehow, listing where he stood. It took Steve a moment to realise he had only one arm. The left sleeve of his jacket hung empty, knotted in the middle. Steve remembered his manners with a jolt of embarrassment — he stepped forward, put out his hand.

“Good to meet you — I’m Steve,” he said, mustering a smile.

“I know.” The man spoke low and quick, and blinked as he did as though he’d startled himself. For a moment they stood there and looked at each other. The man’s face was curtained by thick dark hair, almost grazing his shoulders; the face behind it was neatly angular, and the eyes were open a fraction too widely. Something in that look was familiar. Something in his posture, too, straight backed and tense. His hand was a fist.

As abruptly as he’d stood, Bucky turned and left the room. Didn’t run, but he seemed to be gone in a flash nonetheless. Steve dropped his hand back to his side.

“Ah.” With a weak sigh, Rebecca drifted across the room herself, waving in the direction of the door. The poor woman seemed half asleep, far away. “Don’t mind him. My brother. It isn’t personal, he’s just…” She trailed off, hauling a faded orange steel kettle from the sink and setting it with a clunk on the stovetop. The feeling of having stepped back in time, which had been creeping up on Steve slowly for a while, now almost enveloped him entirely — the electric bulb fizzing quietly above their heads seemed to be the only reminder that he hadn’t. “He’ll show you round in the morning. I’d do it myself, but I… just don’t have time.” 

Steve sat, taking the nearest chair. He let his bag slide off his shoulder to rest by his feet. The fuzzy shadow of a pair of sheepdogs, asleep in a heap beneath the table, twitched slightly at the sound of it. Shortly a mug of coffee appeared on the table in front of him. Rebecca nodded when he thanked her, watching him through eyes that badly wanted to close.

“I’m sure you’re tired,” she said, and he was. Since he’d sat down it had begun to feel as though gravity had doubled in force, weighing him down so heavily he might never stand up again. He could have slept right there at the table. Easily, too; he’d slept in worse places. “Drink, and I’ll show you your room. Bucky will get you tomorrow.”

\--

The room was not much more than an attic, small and whitewashed with one sloping wall and rafter beams which Steve had to duck under in places. It could be locked with a mortise; Rebecca gave him an old brass key on a string, bade him goodnight, and disappeared into the corridor. There was a bed with clean sheets and an antiquated lamp on a little cabinet beside it, faded floral curtains drawn across the window, and an empty chest of drawers which smelled faintly of mothballs and wood polish.

Steve sat heavily on the mattress and listened to the bedframe creak gently under his weight. He closed his eyes a moment, felt inside his pocket for the rosary there. Ran his thumb over the smooth wooden beads, felt the delicate relief of the body on the cross. “Thank you for bringing me here safe,” he murmured, then fell silent. He wanted to say more. The words wouldn’t come.

\--

On his way back from the bathroom a great dark shadow loomed suddenly into Steve’s path along the corridor. He stopped sharp, and the shadow did too, and Steve realised with a flush of embarrassment that it was Bucky, who looked as alarmed as he was sure he must have himself. He seemed to recover first, though, and then held out his closed hand towards Steve. The gesture was uncomfortable, hesitant.

“Here,” he said, in that low, gruff voice. When Steve offered his palm, Bucky dropped into it a set of earplugs. Steve looked from them to him and frowned. “Sometimes it can be — loud,” Bucky said, as if that was an explanation. He wasn’t looking at Steve; his gaze was cast down and away. “At night, in the house. You might need them.” He was gone again, a door creaking shut behind him, without waiting for an answer.

Whatever he meant Steve didn’t find out, at least not that night. Outside the sky was pure untempered black, moonless, and when he switched out the lamp so was the little attic room. The sheets were cool and clean; overcome with weariness, he was asleep almost the moment his cheek met the pillow.


	2. Chapter 2

The sun was only just beginning to show herself shyly through the curtains when a tap on the door had Steve wide awake in half a second. He’d been well trained to sleep through almost all sorts of racket, but wake in an instant at the right sound, with his heart thudding. Bucky was waiting for him on the other side of the door, already in his jacket. His hair was pulled back, so that for the first time Steve could see his face properly. He looked gaunt with sleeplessness, eyes bloodshot and darkly shadowed, stubble on his jaw, mouth set thin. He was quite beautiful. Either he smelt of coffee or the whole house did, and opening the door had let it in. 

“Good morning,” Steve said, after a moment had passed in which they both looked at each other and neither of them spoke. He didn’t bother to try smiling. It was too early, and besides, Bucky wasn’t, and didn’t look like he was going to.

Bucky’s response was a slow nod. “I’ll show you round the land.” His eyes dropped as he spoke. “On the ATV. Check the boundaries. Check the sheep. Uh.” He touched the back of his neck. “Get some tilling done.”

Now that he had spoken more than three words at once, Steve realised - he seemed to share his accent. 

“Is that Brooklyn I can hear?” he asked, before he could help it. 

Bucky’s jaw tensed. He didn’t answer. Still didn’t even look up. “Come down when you’re dressed,” he said, and left down the hall. Steve watched him go from the doorway, listened to the stairs creak as he descended. 

According to his watch, left on the bedside cabinet, it was past seven. There was a good chance Bucky had been up for a couple of hours already. As he pulled on his boots, sitting on the edge of the bed, Steve wondered whether Bucky hadn’t come to wake him earlier because he’d wanted to avoid his company for as long as possible — or maybe that was uncharitable. Maybe he’d left him to sleep so he could get a little extra rest. 

In the kitchen the smell of coffee was invigoratingly strong. And tempting, but Steve caught a glimpse of Bucky’s shape through one of the misted windows, and couldn’t in good conscience keep him waiting any longer. 

Outside the air was cool and damp, the fog still hanging low, though not so thick as the night before. Bucky was waiting by the doorstep with his collar turned up and a cigarette in his mouth. The mist had settled into a fine veil on his dark hair, silver and delicate.

\--

Steve held on to the back of the seat as he rode behind Bucky on the ATV, following a dirt track through the clouds into the fields that spanned the valley’s rising slopes, the pair of raggedy dogs loping after them. It was a little small for two men of their stature, and his knees nudged the backs of Bucky’s thighs whenever the suspension unseated them.

The tour didn’t take long; the farm was small and most of the fields still empty this time of year. A few grizzled old rams paused in tearing up grass to stare at them as they passed, unbothered by the rumble of the ATV’s engine. 

“You still have a lot of males.” Steve had to raise his voice over that rumble, wasn’t sure if he’d been heard at first, Bucky took so long to answer. He had to lean in closer to hear, too, so his chin almost touched Bucky’s shoulder. His voice was that low. 

“We don’t slaughter.” 

\--

Bucky stopped the ATV by a crumbling stone wall. By the moss creeping across the stones that lay tumbled, the grass growing up to reclaim them, it looked as though it had been down for a while. He pulled off his glove with his teeth, ran his fingers over the breach in the wall, spoke to Steve without looking at him.

“You know how to repair this?”  
“Sure.”   
“Done it before?”  
“Yes.”  
“Alright.”

He put his hand into his jacket pocket and produced the other glove, and held them both out to Steve. The material was tough but well worn, the right significantly more so than the left, the one Bucky wore still warm inside. “I’m going to the barn. I’ll come back for you in a while.” He didn’t ask if it was alright but his gaze was questioning when it finally met Steve’s, waiting for confirmation. It lasted only as long as it took Steve to nod yes, and he looked away again, went back to the ATV. Why can’t you look at me for more than a second, Steve thought. What made you so scared.

Bucky disappeared across the field, taking the thrum of the ATV with him. The silence it left behind, in the moment before the birdsong and windrustle filtered back in, was so absolute it made Steve’s head ring. He was entirely alone again. 

Flexing his fingers inside the gloves, he turned to the wall. It was true he’d worked on them before – his grandfather had shown him how, taught him how to fit the stones together with care and thought, just so, to keep the wall standing strong — but not for years now. How long had this been sitting half ruined, he wondered, as if it was waiting for him. 

As he worked he realised how long it had been since he had used his body like this, how much harder it was to lift the heavy stubborn stone than it would have been a year ago, six months even. How long it took was difficult to tell; when he paused to wipe sweat from his brow and push back his sleeve he realised he’d left his watch on the cabinet beside his bed. But the light had changed, the sun sitting higher, and the mist dispersed somewhat. Squinting, he could just make out the white house at the bottom of the hill, and its modest collection of outbuildings behind. An hour, then, maybe. A little more. His back was beginning to complain, his shoulders too, radiating tight heat into his arms. Steve leant back against the wall he had repaired and closed his eyes. 

Bucky came back for him after a little while, like he’d said. Steve watched the dark blot of him emerge from one of the outbuildings and set off across the fields towards him, heralded by the engine thrum steadily rising. He dismounted, went to the wall with his heavy, slightly lopsided gait, and put his bare hand to the stone. His fingertips were pink – it had to be cold, riding the ATV without his glove. 

“This is good work,” he said, without looking up, as he traced the places where the stones met, where Steve had carefully fitted them together. He knew it was good work – at least, he’d been hoping so – but from this quiet, taciturn man, the praise felt hard earned. So Steve thanked him, and at that Bucky looked up. For a brief moment he looked surprised, but schooled his expression quickly, ducked his head.

“We can head in now,” he spoke so softly still, almost as though he were afraid of being heard. “Get some breakfast.” And Steve couldn’t get past his accent, the strangeness of something so familiar so out of place. 

Steve gave Bucky his gloves back before they got back on the ATV, and wondered if he could feel the warm print his hand left, too.

\--

Breakfast was eggs spitting in a hot pan and thick chunks of fresh bread, and coffee as rich and smooth as silk. Rebecca dished the food onto plates, looking as tired as she had the night before. Steve wondered if she had slept at all. 

“Can you cook?” she asked Steve, and he could tell she was making an effort to sound awake and friendly. She gestured with the heavy cast-iron pan, smiling. “This one, he burns everything.” 

If Bucky had a reaction, it was hidden behind his coffee mug. Steve gave Rebecca a smile, thanked her for her trouble — she waved him off and disappeared out of the room again, taking her own breakfast with her. That feeling again, as though time had quietly stopped passing here sixty, seventy, eighty years ago. 

They ate in quiet for a while, and Steve tried not to watch Bucky too obviously; his discomfort was already practically palpable from the other side of the table. Steve had no desire to make it worse. He tried to focus on the food, which was good, and the coffee, which revived him more than he’d known he needed. 

Bucky stood as briskly as he had the night before. Steve watched sidelong as he took his plate to the sink and paused there, shoulders curved, head low. “I’m sorry,” he said, after a long moment, in a voice like the scrape of wood on stone. “About last night. I— I’m not so good with— with people.” The remorse in his tone was quiet but real.

Steve stared at him from where he sat. “It’s alright.” It didn’t feel like enough. He searched for anything else to say as some kind of reassurance and found nothing.

But then he was interrupted by Rebecca reappearing in the doorway. “Steve?” she asked, and her smile looked so worn-out and weary Steve almost wanted to tell her she didn’t have to bother. “Could I speak with you for just a minute?” 

“Of course,” he said, standing quickly and taking his dishes to the sink before following her out of the room, with one last glance over his shoulder at Bucky, who was turned away from them, that curve in his shoulders like the weight of the whole world was upon them, and he was just barely able to stand under it.


	3. Chapter 3

“I know we covered just about everything on the phone,” Rebecca was saying, as they sat opposite one another in a room which could just about be called an office, at a stretch. To call it cluttered would be an understatement; ceiling to floor shelves, filing cabinets, boxes bulging at the seams. There was a desk in the centre on which sat Rebecca’s breakfast dishes, a dim lamp, and a pile of folders, and Rebecca pulled over a second chair from somewhere or other for Steve. The room faced north, and the windows were several years overdue for a good clean, so the light that filtered in was thin and grey. It made Rebecca – and Steve too, he was sure – look even more sallow than she already did. She tucked her hair behind her ears – there were strands of grey at her temples, like glimpses of starlight – leant forward on her elbows, and gave Steve that tight smile again.

“It’s just a couple of things. Got a lodger agreement for you to sign – if you’re happy to stay, of course.” She sounded uncertain, then; her face changed. Looked as though she’d been let down before.

“Of course,” Steve told her quickly. What else was he going to do? Drive back to New York, back to endless days of drinking beers on his sofa but never quite getting drunk, of wandering through streets that were slowly, coldly losing the feeling of home? 

Rebecca’s face softened a little, and she selected a sheet of paper from a pile on the desk to push toward him, followed by a ballpoint pen. “It’s just standard stuff,” she said. “Except that we’re paying you, obviously… you’ll be familiar if you’ve done this kind of work before. You’ve done this kind of work before, right?”

“Yes.” Steve had said so over the phone – the advert had said that experience was required – but he knew what chronic tiredness could do to a person’s memory, and didn’t hold it against her. His grandmother hadn’t exactly asked him to sign contracts when he’d spent his summers on her farm in Cork, but he didn’t say so. Rebecca hadn’t asked for details. Probably didn’t have the free space inside her head.

He glanced over the paper. Just one page, far shorter than any rental agreement he’d signed before.

“It’s three months to start,” Rebecca said. “After that, we can talk about it, if you want to stay longer.”

Only three? Perhaps it had been written up with seasonal workers in mind, those who only stayed for a summer, but Rebecca had said she was looking for someone permanent. She didn’t expect anyone to want to stay, then, was that it?

It only took him a minute to read the terms, and when he picked up the pen and signed Rebecca released a breath, as if she’d been holding it while she waited. As if she still expected him to change his mind, put the pen down, get up and walk away.

“Did you – get a lot of interest?” he asked, trying to keep his tone light, passing the contract back to her.

She didn’t answer. She just laughed. It broke out of her, incredulous and helpless, like she couldn’t stop it. She shook her head as she filed the paper away in some drawer, then caught herself. “Oh – sorry, you need a copy.” She cast about for a moment and came up short. “Sorry. Thoughtless of me. I’m going home this evening, I can copy it there and bring it to you tomorrow.”

“Home?” Steve asked. Then, “Sorry. I don’t mean to pry, I just – you don’t live here?”

Rebecca shook her head again. “Not anymore, not full time. My daughter just started school in town, it’s about eighty miles out – you probably drove through on your way here? My partner works there, and the commute is just…” She waved a hand vaguely. “And it’s so isolated out here. There are perks to growing up in the country, sure, but… kids need other kids around, you know?”

Steve nodded along, as if he’d grown up with anyone other than his ma for company. He could imagine, though. The way the sprawling fields and empty skies might make the loneliness stretch out further and futher, right past the pale horizon. At least in Brooklyn he’d been surrounded by the sights and sounds of other people, although – in a way, had that been any better? Knowing there were other people all around him, but without a thread of connection to tie him to any one of them?

“So we rent a place in town,” Rebecca was saying. “And that’s why we need the help. Bucky can’t manage on his own, and I can’t keep driving back and forth all the time, but he doesn’t want to leave – I mean, I don’t want to give this place up either, it’s been in our family for… forever. But he…”

She seemed to drift a little then, her gaze unfocussing somewhere over Steve’s shoulder. He almost turned his head to follow it, to see if there really was anything there, something that had caught and hypnotised her – but then she was back, and the urge passed with the hint of a shiver.

“Anyway.” She smiled. Her smile was beautiful, but so unhappy. “You’re here now. Do you have any… questions, anything?”

She seemed like she was hoping Steve would say no, so he said no.

“What did you think, this morning? Everything seem okay, doable?”

He said yes.

“Great,” she said, putting her hands together. “Perfect. I’ll let you get on, then – oh, my number is by the kitchen phone, if you need to reach me for anything. Anything, anytime, okay?”

She was very emphatic about this. What kind of trouble did she think Steve would run into, he wondered. “Okay.”

\--

She left in the early afternoon, saying goodbye to Steve in the kitchen with a firm handshake, telling him she’d come by next weekend. Bucky followed her outside, and Steve watched through the window, without really meaning to, as Rebecca embraced her brother tightly, pressed her cheek to his brow. When she stepped back and took his face in her hands, her brow furrowed and her eyes shining, he turned away, embarrassed. There had been such love on her face, and such fear with it. It felt like he saw something he shouldn’t have. Steve committed himself to washing the dishes with considerable focus.

When he looked up again, long after the rumble of Rebecca’s car had faded, Bucky wasn’t there. He hadn’t come back inside, and Steve couldn’t see him through the window, so he could only assume he’d decided to go back to work alone. Seeing as he hadn’t left instructions of any kind, Bucky apparently either didn’t need or didn’t want his help – alright, Steve thought. He could use the time to unpack his belongings, what little of them there were. Probably better that than going out to find him. Bucky didn’t strike him as the type to take kindly to being bothered when he wanted to be alone.

His duffle bag held the things he hadn’t sold or given away before he joined up, and the clothes he’d had to buy since coming back, since he’d gotten quite a good bit bigger in his time away. Nothing fancy; just enough to be vaguely presentable for the mailman and the supermarket cashiers without having to visit the laundrette too often. He folded those into the chest of drawers, the paper liners rustling softly at being disturbed for the first time in who knew how long.

The things from before: a few books. A shaving kit that, like his watch, had been his father’s. A Bible, King James, that had gone through every single day of the war with him in his top pocket, and come out the other side only a little bit better off than he had, pages curling, scorched around the edges. Sometimes he still found grit in the seams. A picture of his mother, smiling at him from a folding frame, bright eyed and so alive it seemed impossible to think that she was no longer out there, smiling like that somewhere, that the light in those eyes could be, had been put out.

Steve set her gently on the chest of drawers.

\--

It didn’t take long to unpack, and Steve didn’t really expect Bucky to show up by the time he was finished, but there was no sign of him for hours after that, either. He was at a loss. Rebecca hadn’t said anything about her brother vanishing without warning, if this was normal, if there was any kind of… protocol, for this. Going out into the fading light and checking the cluster of outbuildings turned up no trace of him. The dogs were gone, too – perhaps he could take that as a good sign. It meant Bucky presumably wasn’t alone, and if they were worth their salt the dogs would come and find him, find help, if anything was wrong. Like when he’d been fourteen, and his grandparents’ soft-eyed collie had sought him out, whining inconsolably, and led him twenty minutes through the fields to where his Seanathair lay eyes closed and bleeding in a ditch. Would they know to look for him, though? They’d come back to the house, surely?

He sat at the kitchen table and turned a long since cold mug of coffee between his hands until the last light had left the sky and he was sitting almost in the dark, and he was still alone. He would have to go out. Go and look for him. This—

The door thudded open, and Steve stood up with a start, spilling cold coffee onto his fingers, the table. Bucky came inside without acknowledging him, and without switching on the light. The growing moon was too thin to illuminate him – Steve stared at the dark shape of his back as he stood aside to let the dogs in, took off his coat and hung it on the rack. The most sound came from the dogs, snuffling softly around the legs of the table. He thought Bucky was going to ignore him entirely, and he didn’t know what to do, whether to speak, or let him pass without incident – but then Bucky paused, his back still to him, in the doorway that led to the stairs.

“Whatever Becca told you,” he said, his voice so low, smoke-rough, and Steve felt as if he were suspended on that voice, on those words, on the sliver of Bucky’s brow and short straight nose that he could see just barely in the light from the corridor, as he turned his head over his shoulder to speak to him. “She’s wrong. I can manage just fine on my own. I don’t need a _minder_.”

Steve stared at him without words. He kept staring for a good few moments after Bucky had left the room, and his heavy footsteps were sounding on the stairs.

He waited for the footsteps to fade, rinsed out his mug, and went up to bed.

It was too early to sleep, but he couldn’t think what else to do. He didn’t feel like trying to make dinner, and he was too distracted to read. He took a shower, running the water as hot as he could bear it, and while it soothed the ache in his shoulders it did little to quiet his thoughts. The shift in Bucky’s attitude was so stark and so strange. Sure, he had not been exactly friendly to Steve beforehand, but nor had he been so openly hostile. He had shown him the land. Asked him to mend the wall. Why bother, if he so deeply resented Steve’s presence? Had Rebecca said something to him before she left?

Back in his room, he checked his watch. Still too early. The house creaked and whispered quietly, as old houses did, but he couldn’t tell if any of those sounds might be coming from Bucky, wherever he was. Rebecca had only shown him his own bedroom, and the tiny bathroom along the hall which, she said, would exclusively be his. A private bathroom. His grandmother would have laughed at the very notion.

He lay flat on his back on top of the sheets. He’d made the bed on automatic, without thinking, following an unbreakable habit. There were cobwebs in the beams, just discernable if he squinted. The thought of spiders in the ceiling and mice in the walls was oddly comforting. The thought of life in every corner, all around him, not just where he lay.

There was an old trick he’d carried with him from childhood, from his mother’s mouth, when he couldn’t sleep for the pain in his chest, the weight on his lungs. It went with him through the war, served him well before he learned to tune out the all-night thunder of guns, back to Brooklyn where it had been the too-still silence that had kept him awake. He turned the rosary over in his fingers. He tried to picture Mary’s face, gentle and not quite smiling, always ended up thinking of his own mother instead, but really, was there that much difference?

 _Holy Mary,_ he murmured, _mother of God,_ and he repeated it till the words blurred and lost meaning, and his eyes closed.

They snapped open again hours later, in the pitch dark, and Steve found himself standing upright, high alert, breathing hard. Something woke him, what—

Then it came again. A great and awful wail. The sound of something dying. Of something being killed. Pain too terrible to articulate in anything but raw sound.

It was a noise Steve was uncomfortably familiar with. So much so that it took a moment to remember where he was. Not a battlefield, not a hospital ward, but a little attic room on a run-down farm. He breathed. He remembered.

It came again, and he spun on his heel, disorientated all over again all at once, looking for the source. Of course it could not be coming from inside his room, but it almost seemed to be. It almost seemed to be coming from inside his own head.

Again, and he stumbled to the door, eased it open so it wouldn’t creak, leant half-out of the frame with his hands still on the wood.

Again. It was a man crying out, a man’s voice swelling with pain before breaking. Bucky?

Again. It rose up out of the shadows, rang through the unlit hall. Still impossible to tell which direction it was coming from, it seemed to fill the whole space, end to end, ceiling to floor, seeping into every nook and corner. Steve’s breathing was quick and anxious.

Again. It ended in a sob.

Then as abruptly as the noise began, it was over. Steve waited, breath baited, fingers raising splinters in the frame of the door, but no more came. He took a careful step out into the hall; his ears were ringing, and even the sound of his bare foot on the wood felt too loud.

“Bucky?” he whispered, into the dark and quiet. It felt so still in the wake of that wailing, he was almost afraid to disturb it. Somewhere down the endless hall a light clicked on and cut a slice of pale yellow underneath a door. In the glow of it Steve saw his breath appear and drift before him in an eerie cloud.

There was a creak, a rustle, footsteps. The slice of light withdrew, like a knife pulled, back into the room by some unseen hand, and went out.

Steve stood there a moment longer, feeling his heart thud inside his head, the cool air tickling his ankles, touching his lips.

He went back to bed.


	4. Chapter 4

Steve woke to the sound of footsteps – somewhere. Somewhere in the distance, a little out of his reach. It was still just about dark; he had to fumble to switch the lamp on to check his watch. A bit past five, but not too close to six. Better than yesterday, but he resolved to buy an alarm clock whenever the opportunity next arose.

He dressed, still stiff in his arms and back from repairing the wall, with Bucky’s quiet, hard rejection itching at the back of his mind. Steve was no stranger to being unwanted, but he hadn’t expected it here, in this place he was asked to come to. How far would Bucky take it? Steve couldn’t exactly insist if he refused to let him work, and then what? They wouldn’t pay him to stay there and do nothing. Perhaps unpacking had been an oversight on his part. What was he supposed to do if Bucky asked him to leave? Call Rebecca? Bucky was a grown man. Steve couldn’t _tell on_ him.

His morning prayers were mumbled distractedly, without commitment. Normally, that would be the first place he brought his troubles – to place them in God’s hands, or those of the appropriate saint. But he wanted to get downstairs before Bucky disappeared into the fog, if he could. It looked like it would be lifted by tomorrow, and Steve had the strange, childish fear that if Bucky was out in it when it faded, he might fade away too.

\--

It was only when he set eyes on Bucky again, pulling on his boots in the kitchen, that Steve remembered the screaming from the night before. It came back to him like a bad dream, like a wave of sickness, made his stomach lurch. He hesitated in the doorway for a second to gather himself before he spoke.

“Bucky?”

The man in question started as though Steve had thrown something at him rather than just saying his name; his head flew up, his fingers seized on his bootlaces. He looked like a ghost, and also like he had just seen one. The air between them was cold and heavy with the smell of coffee and smoke.

Guilt nudged Steve’s ribs – he should have been more careful, though he didn’t know how he could have been. “I just wanted to—” he started, faltered. He took a cautious step into the kitchen, and Bucky seemed to shrink back from him, despite the distance, and the table, between them. Steve stopped. “I just wanted to say, I’m not here to get in your way. I’m not here to –” The words Bucky had used were clear in his memory, “– mind you. Just to help out. Nobody could run a place like this –” He went to make a sweeping gesture, but didn’t, in case that would be enough to make Bucky retreat even further into his chair. “– all alone.”

Bucky stared at him with his head lowered, chin tucked so that he had to look up from under his thick black lashes to see Steve’s face, as if he was trying to hide the fact that he was looking, avoid it somehow. _Cow-eyed,_ Steve thought, in some distant part of his mind.

“If you really don’t want me here, though, I don’t have to stay, I’m sure Rebecca will let me break the contract, so—”

“No,” Bucky said, so quickly and unexpectedly it was Steve’s turn to be startled. His voice was still soft, though. So quiet.

Steve found himself staring back. “Okay, I…”

“There are more places where the walls need to be mended,” Bucky said, still in a rush, like he was trying to get the words out as fast as he could so he could stop talking sooner. “I can’t… you can do that.” It was somewhere between a statement and a request; a plea.

Was it Steve’s imagination that Bucky looked so desperate? That his eyes were wide and searching? Steve could almost feel that look in the skin and the muscles of his own face, hands clasped and head bowed and aching, mouth forming the words, in a whisper, _forgive me, Father._

He realised he hadn’t spoken for a moment, and Bucky was still looking at him like that, like his life was hanging in the balance of what would next come out of Steve’s mouth, and it was unbearable. It seemed that some cord was stretched between them, knotted somewhere deep between Steve’s ribs, and with every passing second it grew tighter and tighter and there was only a moment until it would snap –

“Yes,” Steve said, and found himself breathless. “Of course.”

Time seemed suspended. Bucky was still looking at him. Nothing seemed to move – the whole room was still, the whole world was silent but for the ringing in Steve’s ears.

“Thank you,” said Bucky, soft as snow, and looked away.

\--

The tightness in Steve’s chest lingered; his fingers dug into the seat of the ATV, his knees touched the backs of Bucky’s thighs; the engine roared beneath them; the air was cold and thick. Had he made it up, whatever it was that had passed between them then? That stretched-taught cord?

Bucky stopped the ATV at a broken down stretch of wall, just as he had before, but he kept the engine running. Waited for Steve to get up. His legs felt weak beneath him when he stood.

“Here,” Bucky thrust his hand out toward him. The gloves. Steve felt a little stir of guilt.

“Thanks,” he murmured, turned away.

“Wait.”

Bucky was holding out his hand again. A Thermos flask, army green. His fingers were pink with cold; there was earth under his nails. “It’s cold out,” he said.

“Thank you,” said Steve.

\--

Those became his mornings. The week passed like that – the boundary walls were a mess, long untouched, left to sink slowly further and further into disrepair over how long – it would take an archaeologist to tell. In places the stone had tumbled full away into the grass, left gaps like gates for the sheep to wander leisurely through into the woodland beyond. Hours upon hours of work. Hours of moving stone, making rough edges fit together as if smooth, filling gaps, making it sturdy. His mind could empty of everything other than stone while he worked, for the most part. When he stopped to rest, testing the strength of his work by resting back against it, his thoughts filtered back in with the cool breath he caught.

His thoughts were full of Bucky, and almost nothing else. His quietness, his strangeness. The fear that seemed to roll off him whenever he and Steve were in the same room. Those cries at night – sure he had not dreamt them. His tired, ghostly beauty.

Mornings repairing the drystone walls, his mind wandering – and then Bucky would rumble up on the ATV, and take him back to the house for breakfast.

Without Rebecca there, Steve watched Bucky impale a loaf of bread on a spike protruding from a cutting board, so that he could saw off a slice without another hand to hold it still. Steve watched him eat it just like that, hunched over the worktop, and offered to cook.

“Now, I’m no chef,” he warned, as Bucky stared not-quite-at him – at a point just below his chin, instead – over his piece of bread, catlike. “But I think I can handle some eggs.”

Bucky hesitated a moment, and then nodded to a basket sitting by the door, in which were nestled the eggs he must have gathered that morning.

“Yeah?” Steve asked, and Bucky nodded just a little.

Six or seven minutes later, stealing glances from the other end of the table as Bucky quietly ate the meal he had made for them, Steve found himself smiling. By silent agreement, he was in charge of breakfast, after that.

Afterwards he would work on mending the walls again until Bucky apparently decided he’d been at it long enough, and appeared again out of the still-lingering fog, an apparition on his ATV. In the afternoons he would show Steve to some task or other, something that called for a strong back and two hands; the crumbling stone walls aside, there were outbuildings in sore need of this or that repair, or of clearing out – Wednesday was spent filling a skip with bits and pieces of furniture and equipment that was so old it was barely recognisable.

In the evenings he would scrape together some kind of dinner from whatever was in the cupboards and the chilly little pantry, and whatever Bucky had brought in from the land; root vegetables, crisp green leaves, brassicas, fava beans. There was no sign of meat in the kitchen, despite the large flock of chickens that scraped and pecked where they pleased and occasionally fluttered out from some hiding place in the buildings Steve worked on, just to scare him. They were greeted at dawn each morning by more than a couple of elderly cockerels. Instead, there was an abundance of eggs, milk, and rich cheese from the sheep – and the small yet garrulous herd of goats that rambled among the buildings. The livestock was Bucky’s domain, it seemed. He didn’t ask for help with them.

They would eat together, but in near silence. If Bucky spoke it was to talk about Steve’s work, or to thank him for cooking, and he would leave the room the moment the meal was over and the dishes cleaned.

At night Steve would fall into bed with his body aching and his eyes heavy, and fall asleep in a moment. But he still woke to those screams in the night. Two, three, four times. Cries loud and terrible enough to shake the rafters. He would wake, and stumble to the hall, and stand there clutching the frame of the door, heart pounding, desperate and helpless until the sound would vanish as abruptly as it had come.

Bucky didn’t say a word about it, and so neither did Steve. But his gaze lingered on the earplugs, abandoned to his bedside table, that Bucky had urged into his hand that first night. He didn’t use them. Didn’t imagine they would block out something like that, anyway.

\--

On Friday morning Steve found Bucky at the kitchen table, nursing a mug of coffee, running his nails over the tin, head low.

“It’s, uh,” he started, and Steve halted in his path to the stove. He waited. “Friday, it’s the market in town.”

Slowly Steve took the last few steps, lifted the kettle. “Alright.”

“Usually it’s Becca who goes, but she—so—it’ll just be—you and me.” He swallowed hard at the end of his halting sentence, glanced up to where Steve was leaning against the worktop.

“Alright,” Steve said again. He could see the tension in Bucky’s jaw, his shoulders, his hand. Could almost hear his leg bouncing beneath the table, the sole of his boot on the stone floor. “What d’you need me to do?”

Christ, Steve thought, Bucky looked like he was in _pain._ He didn’t answer for a moment, picking flakes of blue paint off his mug with nervous force. “Bucky?” Steve asked. “Is everything okay?”

Bucky gave the smallest shake of his head, then pushed his chair back and stood with violent abruptness. Coffee spilled over the edge of his mug. “Gotta load up the truck.”


	5. Chapter 5

Steve hefted crates of cabbages and apples and eggs and cheese into the back of a truck that looked like it had been through a couple of wars, and Bucky drove white-knuckled through the fading fog up the bumpy single-track hillside roads. If you could call them roads; tracks, more like, lined with gravel and in some places churned to mud that spat itself onto the windscreen. The tension in the cab of the truck was stifling, and Steve thought of smoking just to have an excuse to open the window, but Bucky wouldn’t be able to smoke while he was driving and it would seem almost cruel to smoke right beside him when it looked like he, of the two of them, could do with the stress relief even more. 

His face was as while as his knuckles, and he didn’t take his eyes off the road directly in front of him for even a second. They drove for an hour or perhaps a year in complete silence, and Bucky’s expression of fiercely restrained terror didn’t change a bit. By the look on him they might have been driving straight for the gates of hell, and that was a look Steve was all too familiar with. It was the look of a man who had just been given the order to charge, and knew it was death he was charging into. 

It was almost enough for Steve to tell him not to bother, to just turn the truck around and head back if the thought of a farmers’ market was enough to strike this sort of fear into him, but he couldn’t imagine that Bucky would take the suggestion. So they drove.

Eventually the hills and valleys began to even out, the trees gave way to fields and scattered houses, a tiny village or two, and finally the town that, yes, he half-remembered driving through a week ago. It was only as they began to drive past people in the streets that a change showed on Bucky’s face – the grim determination that had undercut the fear seemed to reach its limit and disappear, and for the first time his breathing became audible, quick and shallow. Steve was on the verge of telling him to pull over, until he realised he already was; what appeared to be the town hall loomed in front of them, complete with banner announcing the market. Bucky guided the truck into a parking spot round the back, cut the engine, and sat there like a statue.

Steve sat beside him. It was too early for the market to be open, but through the windows he could see other vendors unloading their vehicles, heading inside to set up. Bucky seemed to be shrinking into his seat, still gripping the steering wheel, breathing in snatches.

“Bucky—” He didn’t intend it to, but Steve’s voice seemed to startle him; he jerked upright, then grabbed for the door and scrambled out of the truck. Steve followed, with each moment growing more anxious. Wouldn’t take a doctor to see what the matter was, nor to see that Bucky seemed determined to push on regardless, wasn’t willing to let himself stop. Was he like this always, or only when his sister wasn’t around? Was Steve, his presence, making it worse? “Bucky?”

Bucky was ignoring him, largely, bolstering himself on the side of the truck as he made his way to the back, started fumbling with the bolts. “Gotta get–just gotta—” he was mumbling, beginning to grow frantic. Tugging vainly at the tarpaulin, every other breath glancing over his shoulder, this way then that. “They can see.” His voice dropped. A whisper, horrified. “God. God. They can—”

It was unbearable. Steve went to him and covered his hand, pried it away from the fastenings he was too panicked to work. For a moment Bucky shot him the wild-eyed look of a horse about to bolt, as he tore his hand away and flung himself the few steps out of Steve’s grasp. Gasping, gripping the edge of the truck bed, Bucky doubled over and threw up. 

Steve caught him by the shoulders as his grip loosened and he began to sag, and this time Bucky didn’t try to break away. Just pressed his hand over his face, groaning softly. 

“It’s alright,” Steve told him, as he steered him gently towards the passenger door and actively resisted the urge to glance up and see if anyone had noticed them. “It’s alright, I’ll get you home. You’re okay, Bucky, it’s alright.” He pulled the door open; Bucky, head bowed, reached out blindly and between the two of them he ended up in the seat. He flinched and shuddered as Steve reached over him to do up his seatbelt.

He hid himself against the window on the drive back, even when his breathing evened out – kept his head turned so Steve couldn’t see his face. Murmured to himself still, mostly too soft for Steve to catch any of it. There was just a little. A couple of quiet sentences that made his blood chill. 

_They know. They all know what I did._

\--

When they arrived back at the Barnes’ farm Steve parked up and steeled himself to try and initiate the conversation he’d been mulling over during the drive. The truck had been adapted for someone with the use of only one hand, but could still be driven with two, he’d found. He would let Bucky know that he understood, that he was… there, and willing to listen, and if there was anything he could do. Something like that, but it took too long for him to muster the courage and open his mouth. While he was still clearing his throat, Bucky had popped the door and slid out, and disappeared without so much as a backwards glance. 

Steve caught his own eye in the rear-view mirror. He found he couldn’t hold his own gaze. He exhaled, and consciously released his grip on the wheel. His hands ached. 

Call Rebecca, he thought. Was this what she had meant, when she impressed upon him that he could call for anything, anytime. Was her brother’s vicious, blatant trauma something he could even speak about over the phone? At all? He reached out and turned the mirror away.

\--

There was no sign of Bucky in the house. The dogs were gone, and moments later he caught the sound of the ATV rumbling to life. For a minute Steve stood in the open doorway, letting the heat out of the kitchen, and thought about going after him. But he couldn’t think of what he would say, and before long the engine hum had faded. What was he supposed to do, strike out across the fields and just hope they crossed paths? Steve pulled the door shut behind him and went to put the kettle on the stove. Nothing else to be done. Rebecca would want to know they hadn’t made it to the market, at the very least.

\--

“Bucky was, uh, he got sick.” Steve cringed at the sound of his own not-technically-but-still-definitely-a lie. There was silence on the other end of the line for a moment that sounded a touch confused. 

“Sick? Just this morning?” 

It was a bad line. Rebecca’s voice crackled, faded out and back in. 

“Just as we got to the building.” Steve soldiered on. Deep breath. “It was – it looked like a panic attack.”

“A what? Sorry, Steve, the line – looked like a what?”

For some reason he was afraid to say it any louder. Like Bucky might hear him from across the fields, like he might burst in with that black glare and demand to know who the hell Steve thought he was, talking about him like that behind his back. 

Steve cleared his throat. “A panic attack. He was terrified of going in. He threw up.” 

Silence again, and then the ghost of a long soft sigh drifting through the wires. Steve waited.

At last: “God, I’m so sorry, Steve. I didn’t realise it would be… guess it was too much… I shouldn’t have… God. How is he now, is he okay?”

“I—” Steve winced slightly at having to admit he didn’t know. He was beginning to feel like a bad parent, which wasn’t the way he ever particularly wanted to feel about a man his own age. He rubbed at the back of his neck, then dug his nails in hard. “I’m not sure. He took off on the ATV as soon as we got back.”

Ghosts on the line again. Steve wondered if he listened hard enough, would he be able to hear Rebecca’s brain whirring as she thought. 

“Maybe I should drive over,” she said after a while. “I mean…” Her voice disappeared.

“Is there anything I can do?” Steve tried. “I could try to talk to him—” 

“He doesn’t talk. I’ve tried, God, trust me, I’ve tried. He’s too afraid, I think. It’s like there’s something—” Rebecca drew an unsteady breath. “I don’t know. I don’t even know what… He’s alright, though? He isn’t hurt?”

“Is he a danger to himself?” Steve asked so abruptly it was more of a demand. It wasn’t as if the thought hadn’t occurred to him before but he felt stupid now, felt the weight of his irresponsibility in letting Bucky get away from him and drive off out of sight and reach when he could be at risk, could get hurt, or worse.

Rebecca sounded more than a little taken aback. “No, I don’t think—I mean, not for—he hasn’t—did he take the dogs?”

Steve looked about himself at the empty kitchen, as if one of the great shaggy sheepdogs might have been hiding in the gap beside the stove. “Yeah.” 

“Alright, that’s a good sign. When he gets—upset, he goes out, I don’t know where. Just to cool off, I guess.” There was a rustle and the sound of Rebecca speaking unintelligibly from very far away – her hand over the receiver. Steve was still staring at that gap beside the stove. There was a whole citadel of spiderwebs in there, weighed down with dust. A crackle, and Rebecca’s voice returned, sounding harried. “I’m sorry, Steve, I have to go, I’m really sorry. He ought to be alright. If he’s not back by dark, could you call me again?” 

“Of course. Is there anything…” 

“Try to get him to eat something, when he comes in?” 

“Sure.” 

“Thank you, Steve. I’m so sorry. I’ll call again later.” 

Click.

Steve listened to the dead line hum for a minute or two before he returned the phone to its cradle, and then dragged a hand over his face. There was a knot in his stomach that he knew wouldn’t be undone any time soon even if Bucky set foot through the kitchen door the very next moment. This wasn’t right, he thought. Nothing about it felt right, but what the fuck was he supposed to do with it all. 

\--

Without Bucky there to show him what needed doing next Steve was at a loss. He went outside and walked a circuit around the outbuildings, checked the work he’d done the day before as if it could’ve changed overnight, stood and watched the chickens scratching in the dirt, shooed the goats away from where they were trying to chew through the fence around the vegetable patch; all the while his ears straining for the sound of that engine’s hum. He walked up to his beat-up old car still sitting at the top of the track where he’d left it and retrieved a pack of cigarettes from the glovebox.

He didn’t smoke so much anymore, not since he was discharged, but he lit one for the sake of it and smoked it leaning against the bonnet, looking down at the little house snug in the valley. Looking for Bucky somewhere was what he was really doing, but the fog was still lying too thick – he could only find the house so clearly because he’d left a light on in the kitchen.

This doesn’t have to be your problem, he told himself, as he watched the smoke from his mouth become one with the mist. You’re here to work. You just have to work with him. You don’t _have_ to _care_ about him.

It was too late for that, though, and he knew it. It had been too late for that the moment Steve saw him.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for semi-graphic self harm in this chapter - skip to the end notes for a summary.

A week wandered past without a word spoken about Bucky’s breakdown. On Friday morning Rebecca showed up bright and early and started loading the truck, and Steve hurried out to help her when he realised. 

“Morning. You remember the way out to town?” She asked, without stopping. Her face was pink from the cold, her sleeves rolled up to the elbows. Steve grabbed the nearest crate.

“I think so.”

“You can follow my car. Next week I’ll meet you at the market, okay? It runs till noon. You’ll be able to get back alright?” Her voice was not unfriendly, but certainly efficient, straightforward. There was work to do, and she was going to see it done.

“Yeah.” 

“Great!” 

And so it went from then on. Steve saw even less of Bucky – he might have been a ghost, for the way he seemed to drift silently around the farm, the way he seemed to appear nearby without any sound of footsteps, the way he seemed to stare at things only he could see, the way he, the way he. Hard to say whether it was the house or Bucky himself that was haunted – the noises at night never stopped, though it became harder to tell what was real and what Steve was simply dreaming. 

He stood, one evening, in front of the chipped and stained mirror that hung above the sink in the bathroom only he used. It had to be a month now that he’d been there, and he realised for the first time that his shaving kit still sat unopened on the cabinet. What he’d thought was just stubble on his chin was a full-blown beard now, and not a very neat one at that. And he looked pale. Had to be the weather. He’d hardly seen the sun since he arrived, mostly just caught glimpses of it on the journeys to and from town, as if it were actually avoiding sending its light down into the little valley. By now he was so used to the fog that he hardly noticed it, except that his clothes never felt quite all-the-way dry, and it was always just a little bit cold, even in the kitchen by the stove.

It was late as Steve stood there looking at himself, the sun long since set, dinner already in his belly. Bucky hadn’t been showing up for meals – Steve would make enough for him anyway and leave it on the stove, and it would be gone the next day so he knew he ate, but he never actually saw him. All Steve could think was that he was embarrassed, ashamed, maybe, of what had happened that Friday. Without his quiet ghost-like presence the little house ached with loneliness, but Steve had no idea how to broach the subject without scaring him off. 

Besides, he was used to loneliness. Used to guilt, too. 

It was late, and there was nothing else left but to say his prayers and go to bed. He realised he was still holding his toothbrush, and switched the tap on to rinse it off. The water rattling in the old pipes sounded like someone sobbing. Really, the plumbing probably all needed ripping out and redoing; Steve couldn’t even hazard a guess as to how old it had to be. The tap squeaked and squealed as he turned it off, and he stood a moment waiting for the sobbing sound to stop. It took a moment longer for him to realise why it wasn’t – that it wasn’t just the house getting to him, making him imagine things. 

The sound wasn’t coming from the house itself, it was coming from a person inside of it, and there was only one other person there, unless they had attracted a particularly strange home intruder. Steve braced himself against the sink and took a breath. 

\--

There was no moonlight as he made his way down the narrow corridor, with its sloped ceiling and creaking floor, and something inexpressible kept him from looking for a light switch. The shadows felt too still and sombre to be disturbed, and perhaps he was afraid that if this was a dream, a light might wake him from it. It felt like being under a spell, moving along that dark little hall, following the sound of someone crying. Now and then it would fade or stop altogether before sounding out again, growing steadily louder until he found himself outside of the door that had to be Bucky’s. Steve felt like he had walked a mile – yet it couldn’t have been all that far, for him to have heard the sobbing from his own bathroom. It wasn’t all that loud; it certainly wasn’t wailing. Rather it was a low and painful sound, rough and intermittent; it was the sound of someone resigned to their pain, long accustomed to it, yet unable still to escape or even dull it. It was the sound of someone who had been nursing the same wound for a long time, but couldn’t seem to close it.

Steve gave himself a shake – he was getting lost in it. He raised a hand and knocked gently. “Bucky?” 

There came no response, but the sobbing stopped abruptly. Steve tried again, keeping his voice low. “Bucky, is everything alright in there?”

Nothing, perhaps the rustle of a person moving – but what had he expected? For Bucky to ask him in for a drink? To open the door and say _Ah, Steve, the very almost-stranger-who-lives-in-my-home I wanted to see?_

He should’ve turned and given up, Steve thought to himself, but if he didn’t keep trying then, he probably wouldn’t ever. And the rest of the three months or six or twelve or however long he stayed there would go on just like this – living with a ghost – becoming one himself. 

It wasn’t even that he couldn’t deal with the loneliness. Bucky – Steve didn’t know him, it wasn’t as though he was aching for his company, exactly. But there was something. There was something that had driven him to that door, that had raised his hand and touched his knuckles to the wood and that kept him there still asking. 

Who said you could never help others if you couldn’t even help yourself? Someone who was full of shit, Steve thought.

“Bucky, I don’t want to bother you, I just want to see if you’re alright.” Nothing. “Can I come in?” Nothing. “Buck, listen, if you don’t say something, I’m gonna come in.” 

From behind the door there came a low choked sound, then silence. Steve turned the handle. 

The door was locked. But there was give, and like everything else in the house the lock was old; it didn’t take much to work it till it clicked, and then Steve pushed the door open. It wasn’t Bucky’s bedroom he found himself in, though. It was a bathroom, a little smaller than the one Steve himself used, not all that much more than a cupboard with plumbing. A shower in the corner, the water switched off but still dripping; the tiles next to the faucet were smeared with what Steve realised with a start seemed to be blood – he was almost afraid to follow it lower and see there, on the shower floor, Bucky, all hunched up, making himself small. 

Steve took a step back without meaning to. He felt a little as though he had been struck in the throat, he had to catch his breath – what he had just walked into clearly wasn’t mean to be seen by him, by anyone, and the urge to try to help wrestled for a moment with the urge to turn and leave. But he had seen the blood, and if Bucky was hurt he couldn’t simply leave him there.

He went to his knees on the floor by the edge of the shower. Bucky was pressed as close as he could into the corner, turned away; his face was hidden entirely by a mass of wet hair and his intact arm was wrapped tightly around his abdomen, so that all Steve could really see in the flickering glow of the single bulb was the white expanse of his back. The shadows were harsh and black; his muscles were tight. He could have been cut from marble. 

“Bucky, are you hurt?” asked Steve, with his voice as calm and steady as he could make it. “Can you show me where you’re bleeding?” 

Bucky flinched at the sound of his voice. He seemed to be holding his breath; his body was so tense that he was trembling. 

“It’s alright,” Steve tried. “You’re safe, I’m not going to hurt you, nobody’s going to hurt you. I want to help, could you just let me see? Bucky, could you let me see where you’re bleeding?”

Talking seemed hopeless, though, so after a moment Steve took a risk and reached out to touch him. Bucky’s skin was cold, and he jolted so hard at the contact that he slipped against the tiles – Steve heard the sound of his knee or shoulder knock against the shower wall, a sharp intake of breath. 

“Easy,” he said, like he was trying to keep a horse from bolting. “It’s alright… here.” Steve twisted round to pull a towel down from the rail and laid it across Bucky’s shoulders. It felt a fraction better to have him covered, at least, not just pale and exposed there in the cold. “Let’s get you up and dry, shall we?” 

It was a task, getting Bucky to his feet when the last thing he seemed to want in the world was to be touched. He wasn’t a small man, though he seemed small huddled up like that –Steve was strong, but the bulk of him combined with his apparent desire to pretend Steve wasn’t there at all was difficult. After a few minutes of coaxing he changed tack and tried to get Bucky to at least turn around and sit, rather than crouch like that, so that Steve could get a better look at him and – figure out where the blood was coming from.

Bucky hung his head low when he finally let Steve turn him. Steve turned his gaze to the side, moved the towel to cover Bucky’s lap without looking, let him have a little dignity, then looked up, and in a moment his gaze found the injury. His left shoulder, where he had lost his arm, had been gouged across to the chest by what looked like fingernails until the skin was red and raw and bleeding freely. A chill ran through Steve’s whole body. It only took a glance – the nails of Bucky’s right hand were caked with blood. He seemed to notice Steve looking, and curled his hand into a self-conscious fist. Steve realised his mouth was open, and closed it. When he looked up at Bucky’s face, his eyes were shut tight and red-rimmed. 

\--

  
There was a first aid kit by the door in the kitchen. Steve managed to manoeuvre Bucky into the next room along from the bathroom, which did turn out to be a bedroom, almost identical to Steve’s own, and sit him on the bed wrapped in towels while he went downstairs to fetch it. The sheepdogs, dozing by the stove, thumped their tails and whined softly as he passed them.

It seemed best not to let himself think. Not to let himself ask questions, not yet, at least. Best to stay focused until Bucky had stopped bleeding, until he was dried off and dressed, until Steve could let himself be convinced that he was reasonably safe. It looked as though he had been trying to tear his arm off. His arm that wasn’t even there. Steve was gripping the kit a little too tight. He still hadn’t turned the light on, made his way back up the stairs in the dark.

Bucky sat still with his head low and his gazed fixed some place a thousand miles away while Steve did his best to clean and dress his shoulder. As far as he could tell there was no need for stitches, and that at least was something. He didn’t speak, though he was desperate for the right thing to say, so much so it was physically hurting. Water ran from Bucky’s hair, traced lines from throat to chest.

“Okay,” Steve said, eventually, quietly, as he smoothed out the last piece of tape. He inhaled deeply for the first time in what felt like an hour. “There you go.” He rose a little stiffly from the squat he’d been in, felt his knees click. 

A moment passed in silence while Steve looked at Bucky and Bucky looked at the floor.

“If you want to… talk about it, or anything, talk about anything… if there’s anything I can…” Steve sighed. He rubbed a hand over his face, then took his hand away and found his fingertips still bloodied. “You don’t have to be alone in this. You don’t have to be – afraid of me. I…” 

He couldn’t stand the sound of his own voice, the triteness of his words. He would’ve scoffed at them himself – what business did he think he had saying them to someone else? He turned away, pressed the heels of his hands into his forehead. 

Bucky spoke so softly soft at first he almost missed it, almost put it down to the sound of his own breathing or the pulsing in his skull where he was gritting his teeth. Steve had to hold his breath to listen.

“Thank you,” he said, in a voice that was low and roughened by weeping. “Steve.” His voice trembled on Steve’s name, as if it weighed more than he was willing to hold in his mouth. “Thank you. But you should go.”

Within his chest Steve’s heart gave a lurch. “Bucky, I—”

“No, it’s okay. I’ll be fine.” Rough as it was, Bucky’s voice was surprisingly steady. He looked up; his eyes were damp and clear, but his gaze was far away. He seemed to look straight through Steve, not at him. Again he felt a chill run through him. He felt, for a moment, seized by the urge to grab Bucky’s shoulders in both of his hands and hold him tightly, shake him even, pull him somehow back to earth. “But you should go.” 

\--

Steve didn’t sleep that night, but lay awake near paralysed by the fear that by morning, something worse would have happened to Bucky – lay with his ears straining for any hint of a sound from the room along the corridor – lay afraid that he should’ve called Rebecca, or should’ve insisted on staying longer with Bucky, should’ve forced him somehow to talk, should’ve, should’ve. He rose at the first hint of dawn and spent a minute anxiously pacing his room, turning his rosary in his fingers and cursing. Only when he heard Bucky’s quiet and unmistakeable footsteps on the wood floor was he able to calm down a little.

He caught up with him in the kitchen, where he was crouched by the table saying good morning to the dogs. Saying it out loud, soft and sounding like he might actually have been smiling – he fell silent at the sound of Steve reaching the bottom of the stairs.

“Bucky.” Steve found to his surprise that he was breathless.

Slowly he straightened up, the dogs still wagging and snuffling around his feet, and turned to look just barely at Steve over his shoulder. “See?” There was a sadness in his voice so heavy that it was entirely arresting. “I’m fine. Like I told you.”

He took his coffee Thermos from the kitchen table and headed out into the mist. The dogs followed him like shadows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Summary: In this chapter Steve overhears Bucky crying and finds him with self-inflicted injuries to his shoulder. Steve dresses the injuries and Bucky asks him to leave. Steve lies awake worrying about him. In the morning, they encounter each other briefly in the morning before Bucky heads out alone.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for not particularly graphic animal death & discussion of animal slaughter, as well as implied history of child abuse, in this chapter.

“Bucky – Bucky, stop – wait, please—” 

Steve didn’t know what he was going to do or say if Bucky actually did stop, if he waited for him – all he had was the pressing need to keep him from walking away and disappearing yet again into the fog – that relentless fucking fog. 

And against his expectations, Bucky did stop. Perhaps he was just startled – he looked it, turning to look over his shoulder as if pulled by a hand. His pale mouth a little open, his black eyes wide, his cheeks already turning pink from the cold, for a moment Steve was struck still in his path by the sheer spectral beauty of him. He faltered, catching a chilly breath. Bucky blinked at him, bewildered and as always a little bit afraid.

Steve didn’t know what to say next. Confront him, he thought. Make him come back inside, make him talk. Make him… make him confess all his hurt, all his fears, like he was being held with a hand at the back of his neck before an altar. No, no. Of course not. That wasn’t what he wanted. That wouldn’t do either of them any good. He just wanted… He just couldn’t bear to let him disappear again. That was it. He couldn’t bear it.   
“Where are you going?” he asked.

Bucky actually looked about himself, utterly at a loss. “Work,” he said finally, one single blunt syllable.

“Alright. Well. I’m coming too,” Steve said, seizing his coat from its hook and elbowing into it with determination, pulling the door closed behind him with a bang that made the both of them flinch. 

“I don’t need help.” Bucky didn’t sound angry, like he had that day he’d said he didn’t need to be watched over, looked after. Just confused and anxious. He was standing lightly on the balls of his feet, hand balled up, like he was ready to take off running at any moment. 

“Fine,” Steve said, and strode in his direction anyway.

\--

It seemed like Bucky was too perplexed by Steve’s sudden burst of attitude to tell him to fuck off – he simply let him follow. He walked with nervous determination, his shoulders hunched up towards his ears, his spine curved and drawn taught like the string of a bow. Steve caught him, every few steps, trying to glance over his shoulder without really looking like he was glancing. For his sake, and with a twinge of guilt each time, Steve pretended not to notice. His chest was tight, the way it used to get when he was a child before the long summers of seaside air and manual labour had lent some strength to his lungs, the way it used to get right before he stopped being able to breathe entirely. 

He felt wild. He felt driven by some higher purpose; he couldn’t hold onto a proper thought for more than half a second; he felt like if he let Bucky out of his sight for one more minute this really would be the time he disappeared for good; he couldn’t take his eyes off Bucky’s broad, strong back; he didn’t know what he was doing and it was taking his breath away. As they marched through the fields towards no apparent end he felt like he was on the cusp of bursting into flames.

Then all at once Bucky stopped stock still. One of those moments where Steve had built up such momentum that if it there had been just a little less distance between them he would have walked smack into him. Bucky stopped still, and Steve stumbled to a halt behind him, and he heard the sharp pull of Bucky’s breath before he took off running. 

It was so unexpected it startled Steve into running after him, despite not knowing why. Bucky had been the only thing in his field of vision, the only thing to which he’d been paying the slightest bit of attention – he could’ve been leading Steve anywhere in the world, and Steve would’ve followed him blindly, just then. 

But now that he knew to look, he did, and his gaze fell upon the thing that had brought Bucky to such a sudden stop. 

They were only a few yards from the boundary of the field – how long they’d been walking, Steve couldn’t even guess – at a part where the stone wall had been eroded so completely that a stretch of it had been replaced with wire fencing. The soft white body of a sheep lay still and quiet on the ground flush against it, its neck caught in the wire, strangled.

Steve’s stomach dropped. Already Bucky was on his knees beside the animal, murmuring, reaching through the wire to gently stroke its soft black head, then trying to prise wider the gap in the fence. Trying to free the sheep, even though it was already dead. 

“Fuck.” Steve heard him whisper, and he pulled his hand away sharply. He must have caught it on some sharp piece of wire; his palm was bleeding. His gloves were still in Steve’s coat pocket. Guilt pricked into him like needles. 

Slowly, heavy with guilt and with caution, Steve knelt down beside him. Bucky watched, white and thin-lipped and still bleeding, as Steve carefully worked the wire loose enough to slip the sheep’s limp head through the opening and let it lie it gently on the grass.

“I’m sorry, Bucky,” he said, and meant it deeply. 

“It’s my fault,” Bucky was saying, staring at the animal’s sad little body. He looked devastated, as if the loss of one sheep was affecting him far more deeply than Steve had ever seen before on someone who lived by farming. Bucky closed his eyes. His dark brows pinched together. “So _stupid_.” 

Steve didn’t know how to comfort him. He knew, though, that he was bleeding, so he reached for his hand. “Let me see that,” he said gently. 

As if unthinkingly, Bucky held out his hand. The wire had punctured his palm, but he wasn’t hurt badly. Steve cupped his hand in his own to look at it more closely, and he felt Bucky react as if he’d been struck by lightning. He almost pulled his hand away, seemed only to keep it there by some immense force of will. 

How long had it been, Steve wondered, since anyone other than his sister had touched him kindly? Touched him at all? As he wondered he realised that he could ask the same thing of himself. And he realised with a twisting sort of pain that he couldn’t think of the answer. Surely it hadn’t been his mother. Surely someone had cared for him since then.

Something came over him then that he wouldn’t ever be able to explain. He held Bucky’s hand in his own and raised it to his mouth. He held this man’s hand, this man he hardly knew, this hand stained with blood, and brought it to his lips.

The world was silent for a moment. Bucky’s skin was cold and coppery, his blood already having cooled in the air.

Steve took a breath and the sound of his pulse came rushing into his ears. He lifted his face. Bucky was staring at him, motionless, barely breathing. Steve leaned towards him – touched his cheek, cold too and rough with stubble, close enough now to almost taste that velvet coffee –

Bucky drew back abruptly, and Steve almost flinched. He opened his mouth to say something, say sorry, that he didn’t know what he’d been thinking but he was sorry – then with a thud he found himself on his back with Bucky’s weight over him.

He grabbed for his waist, his shoulders, his face, trying to get a hold on him, burning to bring Bucky’s mouth to his; he was all but fighting him for it, to press him close, to hold him, but vainly. Even with on arm missing he was brutally strong, easily kept Steve down. Arm across his waist, shin across his leg, kept him on the ground as he twisted round, knee between Steve’s thighs and when he shifted the jolt it sent through him was almost closer to pain than anything else. Bucky was just as hard as he was. Steve could feel it, hot against his hip through all their clothes, the cotton and denim. Bucky’s left shoulder was bruising into his stomach. 

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt like this. Dizzy with it. 

There was a sharp gasp of relief as Bucky worked open his zip, then he shoved his hand inside, rough, almost angry, and Steve half wept.

\--

It was a while before he could move again after. He felt cold and weightless, he felt like he had done when as a teenager he’d experienced an orgasm for the first time – bewildered, a little bit defiled. He wasn’t even altogether sure what exactly had happened. His awareness had dissolved completely into the weight and heat of Bucky above him, the endless grey sky overhead, the punch of feeling each time Bucky flexed his wrist until it overwhelmed him and he came, utterly unresisting. Then there had been the soft groan, the shuddering of the body atop him, a hint of damp warmth where Bucky’s cock had been pressed against his thigh – he had evaded each of Steve’s attempts to reach for him until he gave up and made fists in the grass instead. His fingers ached as he uncurled them now. 

There had been a moment, just after – Bucky’s brow resting against Steve’s ribs, his hand splayed on his hip as he caught his breath – just before he pushed himself up and away again. 

Steve simply lay where he left him, dazed. He ached where Bucky had leant his weight into him. He ached from having come for the first time since he couldn’t even really remember. His shirt had bunched up and the sweat cooling on his stomach raised goosebumps on his skin. 

\--

After a while, Bucky came back. Steve heard the soft wet sound of his boots on the grass and sat up quickly, embarrassed now that he hadn’t moved in – however long. Time didn’t seem to have much influence there. Hours could slip by unnoticed, or minutes could drag for what felt like days.

“Gotta bury it,” Bucky said, and it took Steve a moment to realise that he was talking about the sheep. Steve felt a familiar little jolt of guilt – he had forgotten it almost entirely. The closeness of Bucky’s body, the grip of his calloused hand, the smell off him of smoke and coffee and cold air, all had driven everything else out of his head.

With a damp thud Bucky drove the shovel he had brought into the ground a few feet away. 

“Let—” Panting in the cold had made Steve’s voice rough. He cleared his throat. “Let me do that.” 

Bucky looked at him a moment, watched as he scrambled to his feet. His face was unreadable. He waited until Steve was standing, his jeans zipped up again, shirt pulled back down – then he pressed the shovel in a little deeper with his foot and stepped back. “Alright.” 

So Steve took the shovel and set about digging a good, deep grave. Bucky stood by with his hand in his pocket and his breath condensing in the air the moment it left him. 

\--

“Why don’t you slaughter?” Steve asked, when the grave had been dug and the dead sheep hauled into it and the earth replaced again. He had set the shovel down and come to stand next to Bucky, not quite close enough to brush shoulders. Bucky hadn’t moved away. That felt like something.

It was so long before he spoke that Steve assumed he wasn’t going to, but after a long moment Bucky took a breath. 

“First time my dad put a bolt gun in my hand,” he said, slowly and almost entirely without expression. “I was eight. Threw up after.” He was looking at the freshly covered grave as he spoke, with steady focus. “Didn’t want to do it again, and he didn’t… didn’t like that. Used to…”

His voice trailed away, and Steve caught the ghost of a shudder, saw him close his eyes for a second. It was enough. He didn’t have to elaborate. Steve’s imagination could do that plenty, whether he wanted it to or not. 

“They know it’s coming. They know what’s going to happen, when you… when you line ’em up, get the gun out. You can see the fear…” Bucky swallowed so hard Steve could hear it. “Just couldn’t do it.” 

Steve found himself nodding, gently. It wasn’t something he’d ever had to do – not to an animal. His grandparents would take their livestock to market, sell them on to someone else to do the butchering, get some of the meat back as part of the payment. One of those parts of life that just happened, that he’d never given all that much thought to. Not that he was naïve – he knew how it worked. He knew what a bolt gun looked like. The image of one of those things in the hands of a frightened little boy with Bucky’s dark eyes… Steve made himself breathe slowly.

If he focused his awareness, if he reached out and felt for it, he thought he could find the warmth of Bucky’s warmth radiating from him and crossing the space between them. His imagination, probably. 

“When, uh, when our mom found out that he was making me…” Bucky took his hand from his pocket, touched the side of his neck. “We have family in New York. Moved us to a school there, that’s…” He pushed his hand back into his pocket, shrugged heavily. 

“That’s where you got the accent?” Steve suggested, quietly. He couldn’t take his eyes off him. This was the most Bucky had said to him since they met, maybe even combined – and it was the first time he’d said a word about _himself_. Not the work, not the farm, not Steve’s stupid cooking – himself. His life, his family. Steve realised he was listening with rapt attention.

“Guess so.”

“Did you stay there long?”

“Long enough for it to stick, I guess. All through school, high school too, and then uh… joined up right after.” 

_You couldn’t bear to go home,_ Steve thought. He didn’t say it, but he could feel the truth of it. Too familiar a story. _Didn’t feel like you had any home to go to._

“When I, uh – came back.” _Because you lost your arm,_ Steve filled in, in his head. There was no way Bucky would’ve come back here otherwise, if he hadn’t been forced. He didn’t have to say it – Steve just knew. Knew it as well as he knew anything. He could just feel it. “There was only Becca left.” 

Bucky was still looking at the earth, and Steve was looking at him; at the pink flush the cold had put raised in his cheeks and in his nose and ears at their tips, at the swoop of his black eyelashes, at the breath of space between his upper and lower lips. He felt the ache in his stomach where his shoulder had been.

Then Bucky looked up and back at him, and Steve felt his face heat like a child caught red-handed.

“Where did you serve?” Bucky asked, so direct and unexpected that for a moment Steve was taken aback. 

“How can you tell?”

Very slowly and very slightly, Bucky raised his dark brows. “You brought a duffle bag. You stand like a soldier… you stand like you’ve got a poker up your ass.” 

Steve found himself smiling despite himself, and then he found himself laughing. It broke out of him like a cough; it almost hurt. “Wow. Thanks.”

Bucky had glanced away for a moment, but now he looked back. Not quite meeting Steve’s eyes – his gaze hovered somewhere around his mouth. He was looking at him, though, and allowing himself to be looked at. “I’m not wrong.” 

“No,” Steve said, his chest throbbing with a sensation he hadn’t known for so long. “You’re not.” 


	8. Chapter 8

On Friday, just as Steve got done loading the truck, Bucky appeared from somewhere among the outbuildings with the dogs, lolloping puppylike at his feet, and climbed up into the driver’s seat without a word, without even a glance.

It gave Steve pause – he wanted to say something, ask _are you sure_ , ask _what changed_ , but he didn’t want to jinx it, whatever it was that had compelled Bucky to get into the truck, so he got in beside him and tried not to look at him for too long. The dogs barked them a merry goodbye; Bucky drove with a tight grip on the wheel, tight lips, brimming with the effort not to fidget. Steve forced himself to stare out of the window and watch as the trees gave way to buildings again.

When they reached the parking lot Bucky made no move to leave the truck or to say a word, but he also didn’t make a move to throw up, which Steve took as a good sign, surely a good sign. He met Rebecca, they set about unloading together, and he watched her almost do a double take when she noticed Bucky through the window. She did a good job of concealing her surprise, though, and Steve didn’t comment. They set up inside together, ran the market, and when they finished up and Steve hauled the empty crates back to the truck Bucky was still in it. Judging by the thick tobacco smell and the pile of cigarette butts in the cupholder holder he’d spent the morning chain-smoking and little else – was that better than throwing up out of fear, Steve wondered briefly, but that didn’t seem like a train of thought that would do well under scrutiny.

“Thanks for the ride,” Steve told him, when Bucky put the truck into park outside the little white cottage at the bottom of the valley. Bucky nodded, let himself out, and that was that.

There was a scrap of paper attached to the front door. Steve noticed it from the truck, but Bucky walked ahead of him and it was hidden by his body. Before Steve could see what it was, Bucky had torn it down and crumpled it decisively in his fist. Steve found himself a little startled by the force of the action.

“What— is everything okay?”

“Yeah.”

Steve pushed a little. “What was that?”

“Nothing,” Bucky said like a shot, like he’d been waiting for it. “Uh, just missed a delivery.” Which was a little odd, because on the very rare occasion that a package arrived when nobody was in, there was no shortage of sheds or byres to choose from where it could be left safely.

It would be far too strange, though, to ask to see the piece of paper. Strange enough to be thinking into it so deeply in the first place. Steve pushed it out of his mind. Bucky wrenched open the door and disappeared into the warmth of the house.

\--

Having been left again – though granted for the first time in a while – without instructions, and unable to think of any of his regular tasks that weren’t done, Steve took himself up over the hill to look for the place where they had buried the dead sheep. He’d meant to do something about it ever since, because he couldn’t stand the thought of seeing Bucky look like that again, guilty and desolate like that. Quietly he knew he cared far more about keeping Bucky from going through that again than he did about the sheep themselves and he wondered, distantly, how great a moral failing that was on his part. Would it fall under selfishness, he wondered, or something else, similar but not quite?

Steve found the gap in the fence, the freshly dug earth nearby. The wire itself was mendable, it seemed, but he wasn’t sure that would be good enough – if another beast were to put its head through the gap, the same thing could happen again. Whoever had chosen the fence must have done so badly. Or time had changed it enough to become a danger.

There was stone, though, still plenty of stone from outbuildings that time and the elements had worn down past being useable, where repairing them would be more trouble than it was worse. Steve went down to fetch a wheelbarrow and put himself to work. 

\--

The dogs found him just as the sun was going down. The littler one with the grey merle coat first, bounding carefree through the grass; then the bigger one, black and white and trotting with an air of calm intrigue; and then, of course, the rumble of Bucky’s ATV.

“There you are,” he said softly as he cut the engine. Steve hadn’t expected to be greeted, and so in return he only blinked. It had been a long time since he had been pleasantly surprised.

“Yeah,” he managed after a moment. “I was just…” He gestured vaguely to the half-built wall.

They stood quietly for a minute while Bucky surveyed his handiwork, and the dogs sniffed at the sheep’s grave.

“Where’d you learn to do this?” He asked then, and Steve found himself marvelling at how practically verbose he was being.

“My grandfather.” Steve looked down at his – well, Bucky’s – gloves, roughened and coated with moss and earth. “My grandparents had a farm, uh, back in Ireland. Used to spend every summer there.”

“Must’ve been a good teacher,” Bucky said, in a soft way that made his words sound like they were only really meant to be a thought, but they just happened to escape, in spite of him. The pink in his cheeks could’ve been shyness, but could just as well have been the cold.

“He was.” Steve felt the ghost of a smile push at the corners of his lips. Bittersweet, though, to think of them, to think of that place. “They both were. They, uh, they couldn’t keep up with the place, though, ended up selling it when they got too old for it.” He had been young and heartbroken over it, but he had also been miles and miles away, being taught then to blow up buildings and put together weapons. Too far away to do anything about it, so far away he hadn’t even heard until it had been too late; too poor, besides, for there to have been anything he could’ve done anyway.

Bucky was nodding gravely, like he had heard and understood. The dogs had had their fill of investigating and come back to press their noses against their master’s hand. Talking about his grandparents, about Ireland, had brought a heaviness into Steve’s chest that threatened to linger if he wasn’t careful. If he closed his eyes he could still see, just about, his seanmháthair’s smile folding her paper-soft face into a thousand wrinkles; hear his seanathair’s smoky voice carrying over the fields the sound of some sean-nós song only he remembered; being tucked into bed with a kiss and an _oíche mhaith;_ hearing hardly a word of English till he got back to New York and even then, Sarah had only resigned herself to speaking it so he wouldn’t suffer so much at school. Steve physically shook his head, needing to dislodge them, those soft-edged memories that were so dear but that hurt to think of nonetheless.

“Are you hungry?” he asked, looking up and seeking Bucky’s face, Bucky who was there in front of him, present and real.

His answer was to gesture with a nod towards the ATV, to swing his leg over the seat and wait for Steve to climb up behind him before starting the engine. Knee to thigh, Steve felt his breath snag on the thought of how it had felt to be pressed against him face to face – the heaviness of his legs then, the crush of his shoulder, his palm. He felt himself burning, and tried to shift subtly back in the seat, and prayed that Bucky wouldn’t notice.

\--

Inside, distracted, Steve put together a meal that required as little thought as possible – bread, cheese, leftovers from the fridge. Bucky had vanished, as was his wont, to do whatever it was that he did in the brief space between work and dinner; Steve had no idea. Some evenings he’d hear the shower running and then Bucky would come down, wet-haired and having changed into one of several thick woollen jumpers, to eat, but often, like now, he heard nothing from the rest of the house but the occasional creak. When Bucky reappeared that evening he was still dressed as he had been, the same muted red shirt under the same heavy dark jacket; his hair was dry; he offered no clues as to what he got up to when he was alone in this house that looked so small yet felt so large and lonely.

He pulled up his chair, hovered a moment until Steve put down a plate for him and then sat, as was his habit – even now, careful to avoid contact, careful not to get too close. Even now, after they had been almost as close to one another as it was possible to get.

They ate in silence for a while, as they often did. It wasn’t until he stood to take his plate to the sink that Bucky said anything, and when he did he spoke softly, as though he didn’t want to disturb the quiet.

He said, “Steve?”

Steve looked at him and waited.

“Do you think, on Monday…” He was always hesitant when he was asking for something. “Could you take a run into town? I know you already went today, I’m sorry. It’s just… some things we need…” Bucky turned back to the table, head low, and produced a slip of paper from his pocket which he put on the table and pushed it in Steve’s direction. On it was written a short and somewhat disjointed list of items in a blunt, sloping hand.

“Sure,” Steve said, a little perplexed, trying not to show it. The list included a few pantry items, bits and pieces for the farm – nothing on the list was in itself unusual, but it felt random, like Bucky had just scribbled down the first few things that popped into his head.

“Thank you,” Bucky said, quickly, and then he washed up his plate and left.

\--

There was a lock on the door of the bathroom that Steve used, but it was still and difficult and since the room was for his use alone, it seemed more trouble than it was worth, and he had stopped bothering with it. After dinner he stood in that little sanctuary of hot steam with his eyes closed, saying his prayers in his head because he knew that he’d be out cold the moment he reached his bed – and he heard the door creak open.

He turned sharply. It was only open ajar, so that at first he thought it was a draught, perhaps, until the next moment it opened further and – Steve was caught so far off his guard that he felt himself a become lightheaded for an instant – there was Bucky, half-lit, shy and shadowy in the doorway. For a moment Steve was entirely without breath. He was not nearly so self-conscious as he once would have been, not now that he’d spent years taking showers in the company of two dozen other men, but he felt his face heating nevertheless – it wasn’t the same, it wasn’t anywhere near the same. Bucky was standing there like a ghost in the doorway and Steve was entirely at a loss as to how he was supposed to feel.

“Bucky?” he asked, but his voice seemed to disappear under the drum of the water. “Are you okay?”

He hesitated a moment, but then Bucky slipped through the part-way open door like a cat might, leaving it open behind him. He moved slowly, his eyes cast downwards, though Steve could still see their almost blackness – slow enough, Steve realised, to give him time to turn him away, if he wanted to. He didn’t want to. He wanted to reach out and draw Bucky into the steam and the water with him, reach out and guide him into this warm safe place if only for a minute.

Instead, it was Bucky who reached his hand out to Steve, and Steve took it. He let Bucky pull him gently a few steps out from under the water – Bucky was fully clothed, he realised – and he stood obediently where he wanted him, watching his face. He’d known what it meant to feel eyes on him, but this felt different, this slow wander of Bucky’s gaze. It didn’t reach his face, but began at his throat, slipped down to his waist, his hips, his… And Steve felt it, as hot and real as if it were Bucky’s hand. Out from under the water the air was chilled, and between the two sensations he felt goosebumps shiver to the surface of each limb.

Then Bucky sank to his knees, and the shock the touch of his mouth sent through Steve was like licking a battery. It almost made him stumble, but there was Bucky’s hand on the back of his thigh, hard and steady. You don’t have to, Steve wanted to tell him, just in case, but he seemed to have forgotten how to speak English – he seemed to have forgotten how to speak at all. He was now, as he had been up on the hill, overcome by what was happening; by what was being done to him, by Bucky’s mouth and its wet close heat, by the strange intimacy of it. This man who could barely look at him above the line of his chin, seeking him out like this, parting his lips–

Steve didn’t know what to do with his hands. He couldn’t bring himself to put them in Bucky’s hair, on his head, anywhere that might make it feel like he was trying to keep him where he was, trap him in this.

Not that he seemed trapped, or in any way unwilling. He knew what he was doing – he pressed with his tongue, hollowed out his cheeks, urged Steve slightly but firmly forward with his hand there on the back of his thigh, and Steve could do nothing but to give in. His hands, useless, at his sides in fists. Gaze unfocused, breathing shallow and uneven like some dying creature. Wasn’t it the French who called it the little death, he thought, or rather the thought came to him, unexpected and unbidden. Bucky was almost silent. Under the noise of the shower was the muted sound of his mouth, even softer was that of his quick, steady breathing.

“Bucky—” Steve gasped, meaning to warn him. Bucky’s nails dug into his thigh, sharp and stark against the haze of everything else around and within them.

Coming felt like turning to liquid, like melting. Now he did stumble, as Bucky’s hand left him; he reached blindly for the tile to have something to lean against, to let his head thunk back while he waited for his vision to stop swimming and for the ache in his chest to abate. He heard Bucky rise, heard him go to the sink and run the water, heard him spit. By the time Steve had pulled himself together and opened his eyes, Bucky had almost left. He was a shape in the doorway again, murky and edgeless.

“Bucky?” Steve said, for the third time, still half breathless.

Bucky didn’t turn, but he didn’t move away either, which Steve took to mean he was listening. For a moment, he faltered. “Goodnight,” he said, at last, for want of anything better.

“Goodnight, Steve,” murmured the ghost in his doorway.

**Author's Note:**

> comments always appreciated :)


End file.
